Rosenkranz argues that in 1922, Einstein was a man of his times when it came to the West’s images of the Orient, and “we...
An eye-opening collection of travel diaries from the legendary scientist and thinker.
In October 1922, Einstein (1879-1955) and his wife set out on a nearly five-month voyage to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain, financed by the lectures he would give. He kept a 182-page detailed diary with drawings, which is now being published for the first time. Rosenkranz (Einstein Before Israel: Zionist Icon or Iconoclast?, 2011, etc.), senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project, has provided a translation with facing facsimile pages, additional texts, photographs, and a lengthy historical introduction. In what the editor describes as a “quirky” and “telegraphic manner,” Einstein recorded his impressions of things he had seen, people he met, and some musings on science, philosophy, art, and world events. Rosenkranz is convinced that Einstein had no intention of publishing it, and he writes that in “spite of his public advocacy of human rights, it was science, not humanity, that lay at the center of Einstein’s universe.” As he worked on the diary, Rosenkranz became troubled by entries that “amounted to xenophobic comments about some of the peoples he encountered.” Many will find Einstein’s comments quite shocking. On the Chinese mainland, he describes an “industrious, filthy, lethargic people.” They squat at eateries “like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods.” The “children are spiritless,” and it “would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races.” He had a more favorable opinion of the Japanese—“unostentatious, decent, altogether very appealing”—and yet, Rosenkranz notes, he was “mystified by their alleged lack of scientific curiosity.” At Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, “obtuse ethnic brethren pray loudly….Pitiful sight of people with a past but without a present.”
Rosenkranz argues that in 1922, Einstein was a man of his times when it came to the West’s images of the Orient, and “we should not be too judgmental in our assessment.” That may be difficult for some readers, but the editor offers an accurate portrait of the Einstein of that era.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-691-17441-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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